All Our Bags Are Packed, We’re Ready To Go

But thank heavens, we’re not leaving on a jet plane!

We are, however, leaving in a Honda Element. Takaza has practiced his usual packing-fu and squeezed the ridiculous amount of stuff that we’re bringing to Furry Connection North into a small enough space that the passenger will still be able to stretch out and sleep in the car if so inclined. Our alarm will be going off at 4:15 AM tomorrow and we’ll be on the road within 30 minutes of that. The idea is to get a jump on the sure-to-be-crappy traffic (rain+thunderstorms+rush hour traffic=hating life) and also to get in to the con before Dan has a conference call for work at 10 AM CDT, since riding in a car with an uncertain cellular signal is suboptimal for such things. But hey, on the bright side, we’ll be there for Opening Ceremonies!

Now, to go fold one last load of laundry and watch last night’s Top Chef before going off to bed. Hope to see many of our friends at FCN!

Best Game Ever

I admit that some of Improv Everywhere‘s stunts can be hilarious (“Look Up More” and the recent “Food Court Musical” were great), but some, like “Slo Mo Home Depot”, can be kind of dumb.

Their latest is the best I’ve seen so far, though, and it has a really nice “feel-good” theme to it: take a random Little League game and make it the Best Game Ever for the parents, players, and coaches. Be sure to read the whole entry because there’s lots of details that don’t appear in the video, too!

Here, have some MFF spam :-)

Midwest FurFest is pleased to announce that Suite Reservation Requests and Fursuit Floor Requests are now available!

The Westin Chicago North Shore has a limited number of suites available, including Junior Suites ($159/night), Westin Workout Suites ($159/night), Executive Suites ($259/night), and Deluxe Suites ($459/night). Please see our suite request page for room diagrams and pictures. The Suite Request page can be found at http://www.furfest.org/2008/mff2008-suiterequests.html

We are also pleased to announce that Fursuit Floor requests are now being taken. These will be for rooms on the third, fourth, and fifth floors of the Westin Chicago North Shore. To make a request, you will need the real name of the person who made the original reservation, as well as the reservation confirmation number. The Fursuit Floor Request page can be found at http://www.furfest.org/2008/mff2008-fursuitfloorrequests.html

Do you have questions about suite requests or fursuit floor requests? You can always send an e-mail to our hotel liaison at hotel.2008@furfest.org.

Early Spring Weekend, Take 1

What a great weekend! The skies were sunny, the temperatures were above 60 degrees (F), which made it cause to at least open a few windows and air out the house a bit to celebrate the impending spring (geeky meteorological note: This was the first weekend in Chicago in six months where the highs on both Saturday and Sunday have been over 60 degrees, according to Tom Skilling).

As I mentioned on Friday, takaza and justincheetah attended the Cubs game while I slaved over a hot computer at work (there’s some neat tales to be told from that, but I’ll let Dan tell that story). After work, I drove down and met them and calapurr, then from there we met up with perro and darkwolph, then headed over to kodi_pup‘s swanky new digs, where we were joined by invncble.

After some hemming and hawing (and being assisted by Cheetah’s forethought to bring his EVDO-equipped laptop with OpenTable bookmarked), we decided to head down to Emmett’s Ale House. Tasty beer was had, and my burger with portabellas, sautéed onions, and Boursin was divine. The company was excellent as well! Afterwards we retired back to Cheetah and Cala’s to watch Ratatouille, but Dan and I had to bow out early due to the long drive home. What a great evening, though!

On Saturday we celebrated the weather by getting out and indulging in some retail therapy. Highlights included some wardrobe expansion at Berman’s, some tasty ice cream, picking up some lovely rosemary-mint bath products, finally spending my Williams Sonoma gift card (thanks colliedoc!), and making our second round of purchases for a certain party next weekend. Oh, and getting sleazed on by the used car Sleep Number bed salesman. I’m afraid it will take more than just sweet-talking to get us to buy at $2,500 – $3,000 bed.

We were tired after all that running around, so we opted to go home and crash in lieu of further socializing. Thanks to tozier_wah and Perro for the invite, though!

The weather on Sunday was every bit as lovely as Saturday’s. Following a nice and relaxing morning and a quick grocery run, roho, genet, and linnaeus came over for some very enjoyable grilling. Nothing complicated, just burgers and brats and grilled veggies, but it was all delicious. The evening flew by and we had a lot of fun. It’s so nice to know that the grilling season will soon be on us. My to-do list for smoking includes ribs, pork shoulder, brisket, and chicken or turkey. I can’t wait!

This week is going to be pretty low-key. Since we’re heading out to Ann Arbor on Friday, we’re going to stay in, keep costs down, and get ready for the weekend. I’ve got a couple of statistics classes on Wednesday and Thursday, so this is effectively a two-day work week for me, which is quite lovely. I’ve got a rather extended to-do list of stuff for MFF tonight, though, so there’s plenty to keep me occupied at work and at home!

Friday’s here, let’s all cheer!

Well, I’m not cheering as much as takaza, who took off this afternoon to go see the Cubs play. If it were 80 degrees on a nice late-spring day, maybe – 47 degrees and 15 mph winds coming in off the lake, not so much. Still, I hope he’s having a good time as I write this. The good news is that since I worked last Saturday my boss was nice enough to give me next Friday off, which means an earlier start to Furry Connection North for us. We’ll probably take off just after morning rush hour, and get to Ann Arbor at around 2:30 PM or so. We’re looking forward to it!

So as I mentioned earlier, on Wednesday Dan and I decided to go out for dinner and try Lindy’s Landing in Wauconda. Not only did their specials look good, but they have NTN! They were in the middle of a poker tournament on NTN when we got there, but the staff was nice enough to turn one of their many TV’s to the NTN Trivia channel for us. The food was OK – the fried wonton-wrapped mozzarella sticks were a pleasantly crunchy diversion from the usual, and the garlic mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli that came with my meatloaf were tasty. Alas, the meatloaf itself was rather tasteless and covered up by a spicy barbecue sauce (?!) that masked whatever flavor there might have been. Dan’s pizza was to his liking, at least. I was impressed that when I ordered a 23 ounce Fat Tire Ale, I was told that they were out of tall glasses so the waitress just gave me two pint glasses – all for three bucks! We’ll
definitely be going back.
The only other item of note from this week was the surprising revelation that I can actually find a frozen entree that isn’t completely nasty! Garden Fresh Market carries a line of frozen Indian from SWAD Foods. I picked up the mutter paneer a few weeks back and finally got around to making it. I made up some white rice and served it with the mutter paneer and…wow! Excellent flavor, and a surprising spiciness that I’m not used to from a frozen entree. I’ll definitely be picking up a few more of these entrees to keep in the freezer.

Plans for this evening are kind of hazy. Depending on how the afternoon goes for him, I may go into the city and meet Dan or I may just hang out at home. As for the weekend, the plans we had for Saturday night fell through, so we’re kind of at loose ends. We’ll see what develops!

Everything Old Is New Again

Those of you who know me know I’m definitely not a “car guy”, but this amused me. On my commute in this morning, I was driving behind a Volvo C30:

It reminded me for all the world of one of these:

Mmm, gotta love those AMC Pacers…

That Was The Weekend That Was

Now that was a nice, low-key weekend. On Saturday I came into work at about 9 AM and worked until around 2 PM before heading home. It’s not that I had anything too urgent, it’s more that the boss is very cool about comp time and I’m hoping to take a half or full day off on Friday the 11th so we can head out earlier for FCN. I could probably get away with asking for a full day at this point but I may come in for a few hours next Saturday morning just to seal the deal. It doesn’t hurt to be seen coming in on weekends, either, since so few in my department do it (excepting the boss).

After I got home, takaza and I talked a bit, then decided to run some errands. We went over to Target and picked up some things for the house (including a spiffy new clock radio), as well as some grocery items. Just to try something different for dinner Dan tried making chicken egg and cheese biscuits; unfortunately, the flavor of the sautéed chicken was eclipsed by everything else. But hey, it was an interesting experiment. We enjoyed the rest of the evening watching accumulated episodes of “Chuck” on our Tivo.

Sunday, linnaeus came up to hang out. We ran some errands, which including getting some supplies for our party at FCN, then rented a couple of movies from a nearby Redbox (which is a pretty slick deal!). We picked up Monster House and The Queen. We went home, ordered pizza and put on Monster House. It was…wow. I can see why the reviews on Metacritic range from 30 to 98 out of 100. I would say this movie is too scary and intense for kids, but too schlocky for adults. I’m glad we didn’t pay full price, but at least I didn’t feel like I wasted the time spent watching it. Linnaeus had to head home shortly after the movie; I suppose we’ll eat the late fee (ooh, another dollar!) and watch The Queen tonight.

No real plans for this week, though who knows what might pop up. I would really like to get back into the habit of getting together with folks during the week to break up the monotony a bit, but being way out in the suburbs can be somewhat limiting in that regard. We’ll have to see what we can put together – maybe more NTN one night or something.

Requiem for a Coffee Maker

Once upon a time (actually, it was a little over three years ago), I got the most wonderful present from takaza: a Bodum Santos electric vacuum press coffee maker. I was pleased as punch with it, and it was a truly wonderful gift. Many of you have seen it in action at various parties since then, and it has served us well. Alas, the years have not been kind to it. First, there was a failure in the electronics, which Bodum repaired under warranty (eventually).

Over the years, though, the electronics have gotten worse even after being replaced, and on top of that since the unit is difficult to clean it has developed a coffee-colored coating that just won’t come off, and has started to affect the taste of my morning coffee. (I will note that these problems are well-documented by other Bodum Santos Electric owners). I looked into replacing the unit, but it appears Bodum doesn’t even offer it anymore; in fact, no one offers an electric vacuum press coffee maker on the consumer market right now, as near as I can tell.

So what to do? Well, I’m going to give the unit a thorough scrubbing from top to bottom and then I’m going to retire it, using it only for when we have company or at parties (because sometimes you need 12+ cups of coffee, stat!). In its place, I’ll be going back to the method which served me so well for years: my trusty French press coffee maker.

Next up: replacing the Mr. Coffee burr grinder which is unfortunately starting to show wear and tear as well (it tends to stop grinding at random intervals, leaving me with no clue how much more coffee I might need to grind). I’ve got my eye on a lovely Capresso burr grinder that will probably be heading my way sooner than later…

If It’s Tuesday…

Another Tuesday, another exciting weekend recap. Well, for some value of exciting.

It was confirmed that we got a full twelve inches of snow on Friday. Fortunately, it warmed up and half of it was melted away by the end of the weekend. Still, it was very pretty to look at on Saturday morning and relax with a nice cup of coffee and some nice music playing. Once takaza woke up, we got to work cleaning up the living room and dining room, then moving all the furniture into the kitchen to give the carpet a needed steam-cleaning.

While the carpet dried we went out for a tasty dinner at Scott Dogs, stopped by Antioch Liquors for the first round of purchases for Furry Connection North, then stopped by Garden Fresh Market to do some grocery shopping. It was an expensive trip there, but with boneless skinless chicken breasts and strip steaks on sale, we laid in a supply of both for the freezer. The carpet was almost, but not quite, dry when we got home, so we arranged furniture as best we could and relaxed for the rest of the evening poking at our laptops.

On Sunday, Dan was feeling sort of blah and antisocial, so I struck out on my own for the Easter dinner that linnaeus was hosting at his place. roho and genet, siriuswolfstar and simbalion, and rustitobuck were also in attendance. Dinner was a very tasty roasted turkey breast, sausage wrapped in brioche, garlic mashed potatoes, and salad. Just excellent! For dessert, Roho and Genet made their tasty cinnamon monkey bread. They were also kind enough to give me a lift home. I had a blast, but getting to bed at 12:15 AM damn near killed me the following day.

Monday both Dan and I were dragging. After we both got home and took care of some chores around the house, we were feeling a bit better, and Dan made a delicious dinner of chicken and rice. The rest of the week looks like it’s going to be pretty low-key, as will this weekend. That’s good, though – I like having some quiet time with my wuff!

And Then It Snowed. A Lot.

When I left for work this morning there were a few snowflakes in the air and the ground was dry. There’s eight inches of snow on the ground right now and it is still falling hard. The roads are plowed, at least, but the driveway into our townhouses garages aren’t; I had to bull my way through with my little two-wheel-drive and hope I didn’t get stuck – yay for snow-driving skills! I shoveled a bit to at least knock down the berm at the end of the driveway so others can get a better shot at getting in, though the whole time the phrase “heart attack snow” (the phrase that they’ve been bandying about to describe the wet, heavy snow that’s falling to day) was running through my head. Yes, I took it easy, but after about ten minutes I could see why they call it that. I’ll leave the rest to the Magical Snow Elves and their snow blowers and snow plows.

takaza wisely took Metra today; he should be on the 4:16 PM train into Grayslake. Hopefully he can get home without getting stuck anywhere.

When all this is done by tomorrow morning we’re supposed to have 6-12 inches total. I expect we’ll be pretty close to a foot, if not more.

Insomnia Again

Man, third night in a row of this. Granted, the reflux doesn’t help (I like a spicy tomato sauce, but it sure doesn’t like me).

And naturally I have a ton of stuff to do at work tomorrow. I guess I’ll do it in a half-awake state…

A Winnar Is I!

I neglected to mention yesterday that I actually won something! One of my favorite food blogs is Serious Eats. Every so often they have giveaways to promote various cookbooks or vendors. I’ve been entering for months, but never was the lucky name drawn…until Tuesday, when I entered to win Artisanal Chocolate Eggs from John and Kira’s, a chocolatier out of Philadelphia. I seem to have won a box of 36 chocolate eggs. Um, wow. A note to all of my friends in the area – hit me up, because it would probably be better if we didn’t eat all those ourselves 🙂 (As an aside, today Serious Eats linked to a recipe I’m tempted to try: Cadbury Creme Eggs Muffins!)

Meanwhile, I’ve been working with my shiny new laptop. You’re right, kellicjtiger, I wouldn’t say it’s flat-out pink; after looking at the possibilities, I’d say it’s a more light Thulian pink. I’m having fun shifting all of my files from my old laptop, and now that I have space, I’m starting to copy our MP3 library on there too. It’s so nice to have a laptop that runs fast and doesn’t have to shift into high gear when I click on a YouTube video, for instance.

And finally, it looks like we’re in for something like 5-7 inches of wet, heavy snow starting tonight into tomorrow night, with possible thundersnow. As this morning’s forecast discussion says, “Happy Astronomical Spring.”

I’m Too Busy To Post! (Or Something Like That)

A relatively busy weekend and a very busy week.

On Saturday we went to a St. Patrick’s Day party; I had wanted to make something in advance but just couldn’t muster the motivation, and as it turned out there was more than enough food. The corned beef and cabbage was excellent, and the shepherd’s pie was really yummy too. Unfortunately, the evening was clearly taking a turn towards very heavy drinking, something that isn’t really a lot of fun to be around when you’re not doing the same (usually three drinks over an evening is good enough for me), so we bowed out early. Not that it’s any judgment on the people involved, just…not our scene, y’know? (and even less so takaza‘s, since he rarely drinks at all)

Sunday was the second in-person Midwest FurFest staff meeting of the year at the Westin Chicago North Shore. I was pretty happy with my preparation going into the meeting, and looking at the meeting notes so kindly provided by linnaeus, I see that we managed to keep the meeting to exactly an hour. This makes me happy. Over eight years, I think I’ve learned that 60 minutes is just about right for our meetings; any more than that and people get restive and the meetings become more of a trial for everyone involved. I think we had a good balance of stuff addressed during the meeting and stuff addressed in smaller groups afterwards. Several staff members who hadn’t seen the hotel got a tour of the place, and everyone seemed suitably impressed.

After the meeting and attendant after-meetings, we adjourned to Claim Jumper, which is located right next door to the hotel. Granted, we had a group of 16 people, but still – 2.5 hours from seating to paying and leaving seems a bit excessive. I will also say (and I preface this by saying that I’m very picky about my restaurants), I don’t have much interest in going to Claim Jumper again (sorry little_wolf!). I’ve eaten once at the Lombard location and twice at the Wheeling location and I have yet to really be happy with the food there. The prices are a bit high, but that’s because you are literally getting two portions (or more!) on your plate; if you don’t take the other half home you’re really losing out. Sadly, my fish and chips were more batter than fish, and the in-house beers were merely “meh”. Oh well – I have two months to try to find the next option for our after-meeting meal.

This week has been a little nuts at work for me. On Friday my boss dropped a quick project in my lap that had me running all over on Monday getting signatures and talking with other departments. Then yesterday, I spent the day across campus implementing a laboratory instrument that I’ve been trying to get validated for fifteen months now. Maybe now I can finally get it and all of the associated paperwork off my plate! Today will be spent back over there making sure all the lab techs are comfortable using the instrument, then I’ve got meetings for much of the afternoon. Fun.

Last night brought an enjoyable surprise, though. We got a call from Linnaeus asking if we wanted to join him for dinner. He had to meet up with roho and genet to return Briana, their floofy, brainless Samoyed, after R&G had spent the weekend skiing in Maine. We met up at BW3 in Vernon Hills and had an extremely tasty dinner (I tried the mango habanero sauce, which was really tasty but very burn-y too!). We also had a lot of fun playing NTN Buzztime, where I proved I still have my old College Bowl chops 🙂 Sadly, Roho was detained by his evil employer and unable to join us; this just means that we will need to get everyone together again and drink beer and play NTN. Oh darn!

First of the Season!

This afternoon the temperature soared into the mid-fifties, which means that it was time to roll out the grill for the first time since last fall. takaza picked up a couple of excellent steaks and I made foil packets with thinly-sliced potatoes, olive oil, salt, pepper, and sprigs of fresh thyme. I grilled it all up over charcoal and it was absolutely fantastic. Sure, there may still be more snow coming and the temperatures are going to drop back down, but it’s a nice reminder of warmer days and fun times ahead.

Wednesday Morning Random Stuff

So this morning I’m off to the third day of the four-day “Intro to Statistics” course that I started last week (it wraps up tomorrow). I have to admit, having the break in the usual routine is nice, and today should be more enjoyable than last week since I won’t be running a fever or coughing up a lung. As usually happens with these things, I do still have a slight residual cough, and probably will for another week or so. This led me to get up at 2:15 AM to take some cough syrup, and I couldn’t get back to sleep until 3:30 AM. Ugh.

So I did finally pull the trigger on buying a new laptop. I went with the Dell Inspiron 1520 (2 GHz Dual Core 2 processors, 3 GB RAM, 250 GB hard drive) and picked up a very nifty discount through takaza‘s employer. Plus, it’s a color I suspect pinkleader will drool over:

Of course, I’d have felt better if I hadn’t read two scary pieces about Dell in Consumerist right after ordering, but I figure that’s pretty much life in the consumer laptop market these days. And I look at it this way: if anything goes badly wrong, I always have someone I can call. Hey kellicjtiger, would you be OK with exchanging laptop service for dinner at a fancy restaurant? 🙂

So following today’s exciting class, it’ll be over to the Westin to have dinner with MFF’s salesman there. Hopefully we’ll nail down a few important items, and maybe get some pictures of some of the suites that we’ll be offering soon, as well. But now, I’m off to class.

Hey! You Don’t Want To Miss This!

Did you know that there’s a brand-new furry convention in Michigan next month? Furry Connection North will be in Ann Arbor, MI, from April 11-13, 2008. Registration and room rates are very reasonable, and it should be a whole lot of fun! But here’s the deal: Pre-registration ends tomorrow, March 11, at midnight! Sure, you can register at the door, but if you read my journal chances are you understand when I say that pre-registration is a Good Thing – it helps the convention organizers know how many people will be coming, and allows them to plan accordingly. I expect that there will be 300+ folks at the first FCN; you should be one of them!

Laptop Envy

So as I mentioned my laptop power supply gave up the ghost again. This is annoying because I only bought it two months ago. I will note that it was sold with the Compaq part number as its catalog number – not “compatible with” or “replacement for” – yep what they sent was clearly a knock-off piece of crap. The power module is twice the size of the OEM part, and the OEM power supply has a ground plug; the replacement didn’t. Looking at the warranty, I see that they will “repair or replace at their discretion”. Um, thanks but no thanks. I have a replacement coming in from Amazon that, which more expensive, I know will work.

For all that this is a relatively inexpensive part, the busted power supply reminded me that my laptop is really getting on in age. I was shocked when takaza reminded me I bought it back at Christmas, 2004 – three years is a heck of a lifetime for a laptop that gets as much use and travel as mine has. Still, I’m also reminded of the problems: if you run iTunes and anything else, it slows down the whole system and any use of Java or Flash is cause for the system fans to crank up to “ultrasonic”, the processor to heat to near-glowing, and the whole system to slow to creeping halt. I’m thinking it may be time for a replacement. Plus, genet has mentioned that Midwest FurFest’s Artists Alley needs a new laptop – they may be getting mine!

I’ve got my eye on a Dell Inspiron 1520 running Windows XP. I’m just not sure I’m ready to make the jump to Vista yet, though I know it’s only a matter of time. Maybe after the next service pack release? I dunno. The setup I’m looking at has Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 processors, 3 GB on board, and a 250 GB hard drive – not a bad laptop for $900. Given that I’m going to be doing work with RAW files in the near future, I’m going to need something with plenty of processing power and memory. I’ve got time to think this over, though. I want to get the best bang for my buck, so I’ll be looking at all possible deals and configurations while I can.

A Lousy Week, But A Better One Coming

It’s been a week since I posted, and there’s a reason. It seems that the time when work gets busiest is always the time you get sick. Those two things buried me last week.

Cleaning up the pieces from a broken project at work kept me busy for the first two days of last week. Then Wednesday and Thursday were the first two days of a four-day course on introductory statistics. Oh my god, you have no idea how boring that was. And me attempting to cough up a lung during it – yeah, I was having a great time. When Friday came around I came in long enough to get all of the paperwork for my project squared away then I went home and relaxed for a while. A brief trip to the doctor showed that the sore throat, coughing, and sinus issues were pretty much just the garden-variety Upper Respiratory Ick that has been going around. She said it was probably viral, but prescribed some antibiotics anyway (um…yeah. Well, OK.)

I felt a little better on Saturday, though I woke up far too early and wound up having to grab a nap in the afternoon. takaza took good care of me and made a run to the grocery store. Then we went up to roho and genet‘s, where were joined by linnaeus, feren, lady_curmudgeon, colliedoc, hypersnazz, and Straif and Hux’s sweet short-haired husky Vic. We had a very pleasant evening of tasty food, good drinks, and good company.

I woke up waaaay too early Sunday morning with reflux issues. I poked at my laptop a bit but then the plug to the computer from the power adapter (which I just bought two months ago) finally shorted and gave up the ghost, leaving me computerless. I still had a pleasant morning of reading, so it was OK. That afternoon, Dan and I met Linnaeus at American Science and Surplus (I was looking for spice jars) and Linnaeus was kind enough to lend me his power supply from his old computer, which is identical to mine. After a brief stop to pick up Dan’s pre-ordered DVD of 101 Dalmatians, we grabbed a quick dinner then went home where I collapsed, feeling pretty drained.

And here we are, the start of a new work week. I’m clearly still not up to 100%, but feeling better incrementally each day. The project I’m working on is now humming along without my assistance (yay!) and I can start looking ahead to future projects. I have the last two days of my statistics course this week as well (boo!), but otherwise it should be a pretty easy week.

Weekend Update-o-rama

It’s the start of a new week, which means it’s time to look back at the weekend that was.

We were both pretty worn out after last week. It had been a rough final week for takaza at his old job, though he received some really nice going-away gifts from his boss and cow-orkers, including $120 in Best Buy gift cards. Dan slept in on Saturday and I slept rather late for me (8:30!). We finally got motivated at around 1 PM and decided to head up to Milwaukee. After a bite to eat at a nice little burger joint in Spring Grove, we headed off to Mukwanago, Wisconsin, home of the Elegant Farmer.

Saturday: Fun in Southeastern Wisconsin

Midwest FurFest Newsletter: February/March 2008

Midwest FurFest 2008, “North to Alaska!”
November 21-23, 2008
Westin Chicago North Shore
Wheeling, IL

Greetings everyone!

The end of winter is in sight, and we here in Chicago are ready to shake off the blanket of snow that has all but smothered us this winter and move into spring. A time of rebirth, of starting anew…and starting to really get to work on bringing you Midwest FurFest 2008!

It’s early yet so we just have a few things to let you know about. Rest assured there’s much more on the way!

First and foremost, in addition to the talented Guests of Honor who we announced at the Closing Ceremonies of Midwest FurFest 2007, Matt and Darcy Sowers (Code Name: Hunter) and Lucky the Evil Dog (mascot for hire), we are pleased to announce our third Guest of Honor, Foxfeather Ženková!

Foxfeather is a gifted artist who works not only with paper and canvas but also leather and tagua, as well as sculptures, masks, and more. Her style ranges from the realistic to the more abstract, all firmly grounded in the beauty of the natural world. In addition, Foxfeather shares her home with a small menagerie of critters, including fennec foxes, pied crows, parrots, toucans, and a growing collection of rare reptiles; we hope that she will share some of her stories of raising and living with exotic animals as well.

For more information, see Foxfeather’s website at http://www.foxloft.com
—–
The next important bit of information is that double rooms are SOLD OUT at the Westin Chicago North Shore. There are still plenty of king bed rooms available, though. You can reserve your room online by following the links from our website (http://www.furfest.org/2008/mff2008-hotel.html).

Also, we have finalized a procedure for reserving suites at the Westin Chicago North Shore! Look for an announcement from our Hotel Liaison, Takaza, in the coming week with what suites are available and how you can reserve yours. Suites will need to be reserved through a specific procedure, otherwise you may very well not get the convention discounted rate!
—–
We also want to remind you that while the venerable but little-used MFF-Talk mailing list went away earlier this year, we are seeing more interest and discussion at the Midwest FurFest Forum, conveniently located at http://forum.furfest.org/index.php

The Midwest FurFest Forum are the official discussion forum for discussion about Midwest FurFest, room sharing, ride sharing, and more! Stop on by, register for an account (it’s free!), and join in the conversation.

You can also subscribe to MFF-Announce, a low-traffic mailing list with only official announcements from Midwest FurFest. For more information, visit http://www.breuckman.com/mailman/listinfo/mff-announce

That’s all for now. We’ll be keeping you up to date on all the latest information throughout the year, though. Stay tuned!

“Medium Pimping” With Out-of-Town Friends

Work work work, busy busy busy. It’s a crazy week for me, but it’s time to take a break a write a bit about the past weekend.

On Saturday, takaza and I took the train into Chicago and met up with fordshepherd and his “Bestest Friend” Julie (tsk, kai_darkwolf – you’re just going to have to try harder improve your friend status). We met up at Union Station and then jumped in a cab to visit the West Loop location of Wishbone Restaurant. We had a light lunch and a thoroughly enjoyable conversation about random things.

Afterwards we walked a block west and admired Oprah’s Harpo Studios, then across the street and into the Oprah Store, mainly for Julie’s benefit. Ford tried extremely hard to get us thrown out of the store for not showing the utmost reverence for the Great and Powerful “O”; it was vastly amusing to watch the oh-so gay male salespeople giving us the stink-eye as it became more and more clear that we really didn’t belong there.

Once we escaped there, we started what seemed like a short walk but wound up being about two and a half miles through The Loop. Following a quick stop by Intelligentsia Coffee (which we had to pass on, since the place was jam-packed), we walked up to Moonstruck Chocolate. We relaxed for a bit there with some conversation and hot chocolate, then proceeded up Michigan Avenue for our next stop, Vosges Chocolate (at Ford’s insistence). This turned out to be a good call – I tried the Bianca Cocoa, an astonishing mix of vanilla, lemon myrtle, lavender, and white chocolate. It was truly delicious. I also picked up a “Rooster” truffle, made of Taleggio cheese, walnuts, vanilla, and bittersweet chocolate. Delicious!

Our next stop was Galt Toys, since Julie wanted to peruse stuffed animals. Alas, their selection was limited, but Ford did find a plush cheetah that he decided needed to come home with him. Finally, we went to the Disney Store and I learned that Rémy is apparently an extremely popular character – so popular they can’t keep any merchandise with him on it in stock. Ah well. Dan did pre-order the 101 Dalmatians DVD, so at least it was a worthwhile trip.

It was time to go back to Ford and Julie’s hotel, some flophouse called The Drake Hotel. Ford wanted to take a cab, but I pointed out that it was a short bus ride. I was informed that one does not simply “take the bus” to The Drake. This would qualify as “medium pimping”, and was simply not to be considered. So we took a cab 🙂 Following a brief tour of Ford and Julie’s room (luxuriously appointed, and an ingenuous use of a relatively small space) and their dropping off their purchases, it was back downstairs and into a cab for dinner.

We chose the restaurant for dinner, so of course we had to pick our favorite restaurant: Heaven on Seven. The meal was divine, as usual, and I went with the “Feed Me Jimmy Junior”. This time around that included: crawfish cake in remoulade, small samplers of gumbo and turtle soup (the latter the highlight of the meal for Ford, I think), a Voodoo chicken enchilada, and strip steak over mashed potatoes. For dessert, I can never turn down their chocolate pecan pie. It was a stellar meal, and the company was excellent. We parted ways after dinner, as Dan and I headed back to Union Station and the long train ride home. It was a fantastic day out with good friends, and I had a really good time. Somewhere in the course of the day Ford extracted a promise from Dan and I that we would be visiting Columbus sometime soon, so I suppose we’re bound to that. Oh darn!

We got a late start on Sunday (gosh, I wonder why?), but Dan and I had to part ways – he to help his mother get her DVR running properly and get her tax information to help her file them, and I to the Midwest FurFest storage locker. I met up with linnaeus there and we dug around a bit, looking for some Art Show equipment and checking out what Registration equipment Paul would have to work with. For lunch we went over to Pierogi Place (yum!) and had a nice like chat over lunch. That evening, there was the online MFF staff meeting, which went OK but not as well as I would have liked – I forgot to call on a few people, and I completely forgot to follow up on action items from the previous meeting. I’ll need to take better notes before the meeting next time to remind myself of these things.

This week is, as I said, quite busy. Between some projects finally getting off the ground and lots of meetings, it’s going to be hectic. But things are going well, and I’m enjoying what I’m doing. That counts for a lot, I guess!

Games, Cooking, and Constuff

It’s been pretty quiet over the last few days, which might explain the lack of updates – not a lot of exciting stuff going on.

takaza and I had a pleasant weekend together at home. On Friday Dan was feeling like a bit of retail therapy and between gift cards and Reward Zone credits we had $75 of credit for Best Buy, so we headed down to the BB in Mundelein. We stopped by the Gamestop there to look at their used PS2 games and I picked up a couple of games I hadn’t played before: God of War and Destroy All Humans! (I’m about five hours into God of War and it’s a whole lot of fun. A little more gory than a lot of games I’ve played, but the puzzles are fun and the action keeps things interesting.) As for Best Buy…well, we never did find anything that looked interesting. On the bright side, the next item that comes up on sale, we’ve got a $75 discount waiting to be used.

On Saturday, we bummed around the house most of the day, except for a run to the grocery store. Sunday I made Dan the chicken and dumplings I promised him for Valentine’s Day (a few days late), as well as the delicious semolina bread from Cookwise. Mostly we just sat around the house and enjoyed doing gloriously nothing.

This week has been pretty interesting. Dan will be transitioning from his old job to his new job until the end of the month (gotta love those internal transfers) so he was at the old location in Mount Prospect Monday, Tuesday, and this morning, then he’ll be at the new location in Buffalo Grove this afternoon and for the rest of the week. As for me, I got a couple of important reports turned in and I’m at a momentary lull until everything gets signed off and we’re working against the clock to finish a couple of projects. In the meantime I’m catching up on accumulated Midwest FurFest correspondence, and trying to resolve an annoying lingering issue with the house rental out in California (they’re trying to charge us for damage that we’re not responsible for).

Looking ahead to this weekend, we’ll be going by the MFF storage locker on Saturday to try to track down some convention assets and answer a couple of questions. Since we’ll be out and about, we’ll probably make a couple of stops (I want to swing by Ikea) and maybe even be social. No plans yet, but we’ll see what happens. Sunday evening is the online MFF staff meeting, and we also need to put together all the numbers for the Point of Sale hardware and software for Anthrocon’s Artists Alley. Oh, and speaking of conventions, congratulations to tozier_wah for signing on to run the Information Desk at Midwest FurFest. We own your soul I’m sure you’ll have a great time!

Birthday Bonus Round!

So just when I thought the birthday fun was wrapping up with our return from California, we had one more night of entertainment. Courtesy of a very thoughtful gift from steviemaxwell, takaza and I were treated to a tasty steak dinner at the King’s Wharf at the Marriott Lincolnshire, followed by great seats at the Marriott Theatre to see opening night of Les Miserables.

It was quite a large production for a relatively small theater, and had the additional unique quality of being staged in the round. Since Dan and I are both geeks, we appreciated the production values, the quality of the music and amplification, and the entrances and exits through the audiences. It was an awesome show. Thanks Stevie!

California Birthday Trip: Days 3 & The End

The last day’s pictures are here.

Monday was The Big Day, my birthday. Honestly, I couldn’t think of anything we could do to top the two days prior, but I was looking forward to seeing what was in store. The day’s plans were a mystery to me, (except for dinner), so I had no idea what to expect.

The first stop of the day had us up and out of the house by 9 AM. Following a 45-minute drive to Santa Rosa (and a little bit of confusion in directions), we arrived at our next stop, one that was a genuine surprise to me: The national headquarters of Canine Companions for Independence. linnaeus‘ mother has raised several puppies for CCI, so when he found out we would be nearby, he suggested a tour there. Really, this was a most amazing and humbling experience, and I am so glad that we went there.

CCI trains and provides assistance dogs to disabled children and adults, all at no charge. They use black labs and golden retrievers exclusively, and the level of care and training that goes into each dog is simply astonishing. We got to take a tour of their grounds and offices, and see how they train the dogs after the puppy raisers initial training, lasting
6-8 months. This is followed by 6-9 months of training at the CCI facility before the dogs are paired with a client, either as a service or companion team (opening doors, picking up dropped items, etc.), a hearing team (alerting the client of a ringing telephone, etc.), or a facility team (therapy dogs). I was extremely impressed with the facility and with the friendly people who worked and volunteered there.
After the tour it was back to Napa. We grabbed a tasty lunch at a local burger joint then it was on to the next surprise: a day spa! It was quite delightful: I got a 75-minute massage followed by a pedicure; takaza got a facial, roho and genet each got pedicures and Lydia also got a manicure. Even Paul, who got pulled away by work for a few hours, was able to get a nice paraffin hand treatment. My massage was divine, and when Paul rejoined us he brought a bottle of wine for everyone to enjoy as well. Our manicurist, Babs, was delightful and we had a lot of fun bantering and hanging out.

After everyone was properly relaxed and such, we stopped by Oxbow Market to search for some good local olive oil. We found a couple bottles that were quite delicious. We also stopped by a very nice wine and cheese bar and had a couple pints of beer, which were quite tasty. We were quite amused to chat with the bartender there and find that she was from the south side of Chicago.

We ended the day with dinner at Bouchon Bistro. My food was quite outstanding: I started with an appetizer of cassoulet with duck confit and garlic sausage, followed by the Gigot d’Agneau (roasted leg of lamb served with flageolet beans and a thyme jus) and for dessert a delicious creme caramel. Brendan’s boudin blanc was excellent, and the desserts, especially Dan’s dark chocolate mousse and Lydia’s blood orange pot de creme, were outstanding. Unfortunately, the service was only mediocre (long waits, confused orders), and Dan and Lydia’s steak frites were quite lacking for the cost. Still, it was a great experience and I am glad we went. It was a wonderful way to finish off my birthday.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. Yesterday (Tuesday) we packed everything up early, leaving the house at 7 AM, and drove down to San Francisco International (by way of the San Mateo Bridge, on Babs’ advice, which I’m sure saved us some headaches). We made it there in plenty of time, though our flight turned out to be two hours late departing (one hour of that spent sitting on the tarmac). We got into O’Hare at about 7 PM, and picked up our luggage just in time to miss the Metra train home. Rather than waiting the 90 minutes until the next train, we opted to catch a cab, and I’m glad we did. We saw Brendan and Lydia off at about 9:30 PM, and got to bed at 11 PM.

So here I am, back at work, and quite exhausted. I’m told we have one more experience this evening, courtesy of a certain panda. That should be quite fun as well!

California Birthday Trip, Day 2

Yesterday’s pictures can be found here, starting just after the silly picture of our In-n-Out receipt.

We were a bit slow to get started on Sunday morning, more due to the general lack of morning people (besides myself 🙂 We piled everyone (me, takaza, linnaeus, roho, and genet) into our Saturn Outlook and drove off southward, to explore San Francisco. The drive through Napa and Sonoma Counties there was spectacular, and we saw lots of things that would have been fun if money and time were no object (i.e. open-air biplane tours!).

After a short one-hour drive, we arrived at the Marin Headlands, just on the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge and a place for amazing views of the bridge, the bay, and the city. We wandered around there for a bit, enjoying the refreshing breeze coming off the ocean and the great weather, then it was back to the car to venture into the city. Unfortunately, the GPS’s directions were rather…confused. We wound up taking a couple of wrong turns that led us to some astonishingly steep streets that taxed our SUV a bit. It made for entertaining driving, and a steady string of expletives from me. We combined the GPS directions with a handy map we had picked up and eventually found our destination: Magnolia Pub and Brewery at Haight and Masonic.

The beers were fantastic, and the food no less so. They had some nice sampler glasses, and we took advantage of the fact that February is Strong Beer Month; I started out with a trippel, a doppleweizen, and an imperial stout. Did I mention we hadn’t had any food yet that day? Man, I’m a cheap date. Dan loved the house-brewed grape and orange cream sodas, and Lydia found their root beer delicious. Then came the food! My Dungeoness crab crepes were pretty good, but Dan’s buttermilk biscuits with ginger sausage gravy, Lydia’s cheeseburger, and Paul’s salmon boxty were even better. The real winner was Brendan’s pizza with the incongruous combination of coconut-braised pork, tikka masala sauce, and mushrooms, was just divine. Another round of beers followed and by the end we were full and happy.

After lunch we wandered around the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood for a few hours, enjoying the street musicians and the little shops. Brendan almost picked up an expensive synthesizer widget, but the price wasn’t quite right. Afterwards we adjourned to an amusingly socialist coffee house, then it was back to the car. The original plan had been to stop by Joseph Schmidt Confections, but we had to drop that plan in favor of a quick tour of Fisherman’s Wharf (which we didn’t actually explore because 1.) no parking to be found, and 2.) wall-to-wall tourists). Somewhere in there we also got horribly lost and heading south on US 101 unwillingly, but we got turned back around and back on course.

On the drive home, we managed a brief stop in Novato where we met up with partran. We had a fun but all-too-brief visit as we did some shopping in the local Safeway and picked up stuff for dinner. He gave me a lovely birthday present, a couple of cheeses from Fair Oaks Farms. We had a chance to catch up a bit and chat, and it was great to see him.

After rushing around all day, the evening was blessedly low-key. Dan cooked up some tasty garlic and mushrooms in butter as an appetizer. Brendan braved the darkness and an unfamiliar grill to cook up some yummy steaks. We polished off another couple of bottles of wine along the way, and finished the evening with apple pie and ice cream. It was a great ending to a great day.

And now we have today – yep, it’s my birthday! Thank you so much to everyone for their kind birthday wishes 🙂 What’s planned for the day? Beats me! We have the “morning event” and the “afternoon event” and somewhere in there we hope to have the opportunity to taste and pick up some of the local olive oils. I do know that dinner tonight is going to be amazing though, as we have reservations for Bouchon, Thomas Keller’s bistro not far from here.

Time to shower and start the day!

California Birthday Trip, Day 1

So we started out the day somewhat slowly. As everyone worked on waking up and showering, I drove over to Napa Valley Coffee Roastery and picked up caffeine for all of us addicts. We were joined shortly afterwards by rasslor, brophey, and shadowolf. Lunch was the first item on the day’s agenda, so being that this was many of our group’s first time in California, we had to stop by a restaurant that had the seal of approval of both Alton Brown and Anthony Bourdain: In-n-Out Burger, conveniently located just a few miles away from our rental house.

It was…well, it was a fast food restaurant. I’m thinking that my order would need a little tweaking to find what on their menu really appealed to me; the burger with everything included a monstrously huge slab of onion that unfortunately made it seem like an onion sandwich with a side of burger. The fries were quite tasty, though, even if I didn’t order them “Animal style”.

After lunch we drove up California Route 29 to St. Helena to the Culinary Institute of America – Greystone. The huge, imposing building was beautiful! I was also amused at the trees that were heavy with lemons just outside the entrance. Inside, we browsed through their gift shop and I got a latte as we killed time before the cooking demonstration. We spent an hour watching the chef make a Valentine chocolate torte with a raspberry coulis. I’ll admit I didn’t learn much new, but it was fun to see some of the techniques I’m familiar with and hear the chef touch on some of my favorite authors (like Harold McGee!). After the demonstration everyone got to try the torte, and it was rather tasty.

After the demonstration there was more browsing through the gift shop (and, I admit, making notes for later Amazon purchases) and admiring the herb gardens. Then it was time to hit a few wineries. Since it was right across the street, we decided to make Charles Krug Winery. After tasting several wines, we picked up a Sauvignon Blanc, a Cabernet Sauvignon, and a Zinfandel. On the recommendation of the Krug staff, our next stop was Peju Winery. This was a fantastic experience – we had a good group of people doing the tasting with us, and the guy pouring the wines not only knew his stuff, he knew how to keep things entertaining. Paul, Brendan, Bob and I tasted six different wines, and he even did a small vertical tasting to allow us to compare some of the wines. We picked up a bottle of Provence (a nice red/white blend), two vintages of Syrah (including a 2003 that Brendan thinks may have been their last bottle) and a Cabernet Sauvignon. (During the tasting, Lydia relaxed in the car and Dan, Mike, and Ray hung out and enjoyed the lovely weather.

After the tasting, we were all pretty tired (and some of us a wee bit tipsy), so we returned to the rental house. We dispatched Paul, Mike, and Ray to pick up munchies while Bob and I walked the two blocks to the Foothill Grille to get a copy of their menu to see what we could order for carryout. Once we got everyone back, we called in a rather complex eight-entree order that they nailed precisely, and we had a great evening of chatting, noshing, and killing two bottles of wine 🙂 It was a fantastic evening and I had a blast.

More to come tomorrow!

Surprise Birthday Trip, Day 0

So as I said, I had some strong suspicions. And I was right 🙂

I left work at 2 PM and got home to find that takaza had packed everything up and was ready to go. genet and roho showed up shortly after, ostensibly to ride to the airport with us since Roho had to work in California. We took Metra in to O’Hare and picked up our boarding passes at American Airlines. I figured we were headed to the West Coast, which meant that our options were most likely either San Francisco or Seattle. I checked the flights and saw that the next flight to Seattle was leaving in an hour; given that Dan wasn’t hyperventilating, I knew that wasn’t our destination. Lo and behold, our boarding passes said San Francisco. Ta daa!

After passing through Security, we met up with Roho and genet again who, what a surprise, were on the same flight as us! I voiced my skepticism, and they admitted that yes, they would be joining us! As we browsed around through the airport bookstore who should we run into but linnaeus. He would be joining us as well. We happened to be joined for a while by calapurr, who was in transit through O’Hare and waiting to meet up with justincheetah, but he was just by to chat. Our flight was only a half-hour late (which is saying something for O’Hare these days) and the three and a half hour flight was uneventful. We had a bit of difficulty getting the rental car (we wouldn’t all fit in the Explorer they first offered us, but we were able to swap over to a Saturn Outlook). After that was a rather harrowing drive for Dan through San Francisco and over the Bay Bridge (traffic was light since it was 11 PM, but it was a bit twisty and narrow through some of the construction on US 101). After about an hour’s drive, we arrived at our destination, a lovely rental house in the town of Napa. We went to bed shortly after, and now we have company and I need to wrap this up 🙂

More to come (with pictures!) later…

Snowstorms and Birthdays

And here we are, Friday at last!

I thought the week might take forever (subjectively) as it always does right before a vacation, but this turned out not to be the case. Having piles of projects at work helps!

So the big snow came and went on Wednesday; in the end we got a hair over 12 inches. The roads were a wreck yesterday morning, so much so that when I went to drop takaza off at the train station what is normally a less-than-five-minute drive took 15 minutes and we missed his train. Since the schedule on the North Central line sucks, his next shot at a train in was two hours later. I went in to work, then left at 8:45 AM to take him to the 9:18 train. Yeah, not even close. What is normally an eight-minute drive took close to twenty, and when I picked him up and saw the line of cars on Hainesville Road, I knew there was no way we’d make his train. Rather than wait two hours until the next train, I dropped him off at the Grayslake station and he caught the Fox Lake train in, again having to take a taxi from Glenview (that cost even more than last time!).
Unfortunately, as a consequence of not getting in until just before noon, he didn’t make it home last night until around 9 PM.

And so we have this weekend. As I mentioned before, Dan is dragging me off on a four-day trip to celebrate my 40th birthday. I still have no idea where we’re going, though I have some suspicions. I’m sure it will be fun and memorable. They say that over the years a couple tends to get more like each other, and watching Dan fret about planning and worrying about the trip, I have to laugh. Normally he’s unflappable and easygoing; being so nervous about things, he reminds me of…me. But that’s exactly why I’m not worried, because I know I’m in good hands 🙂 That doesn’t mean the excitment isn’t getting to me, though – I woke up this morning at 3:45 AM with a touch of reflux and after a half-hour couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up. I hope we’re not going to be out super-late tonight! Anyway, I intend to bring the camera along and be Mr. Annoying Shutterbug (if I can remember!) so hopefully I’ll have lots of pictures to show off when we get back.

Now if only 2 PM would get here so I can get out of here!

Snowpocalypse Delayed

What fun! Last night we only saw about two inches of snow, followed by rain, followed by snow as the snow/rain line danced over our area before an area of relative calm moved in. I was fully prepared to bag work this morning and work from home (yes, I did have stuff to work on!), but there was no good reason to call in. Of course, the snow started up again after I dropped takaza off at the train station, and by the time I had driven the four miles to work visibility had dropped to about a quarter mile. According to the National Weather Service, we’re in for 12″-14″ of snow by 6 PM tonight; that’s a whole lot of snow in a relatively short time. I’m going to keep an eye on things and if it starts to get really bad out there, I’ll be heading home.

Chili and Football and Bookmarks, Oh My!

After all that hemming and hawing about what to serve on Saturday, we wound up punting and changing the proposed menu completely. takaza got up shockingly early (9 AM) and by 11 AM we were on the road running errands. We decided to make a big ol’ pot of chili and supplement it with tasty accoutrements like rice, queso fresco, and chopped onions. I made a batch of homemade cornbread that unfortunately not only turned out dry and flavorless but, when I was trying to get it out of the Pyrex glass pan, the pan slipped and landed on the inside of my forearm, giving me a large, nasty-looking burn (fortunately, it only looks nasty – it’s about as painful as a sunburn).

We wound up with 12 guests in attendance, including Dan’s family. We had a really fun time, and there was good food, good beer, good wine, and good company. The evening seemed to fly by. We finally said good night to everyone by midnight. As usual, we didn’t get to play as many games as Dan would have liked – next time, we need to focus less on the food and more on the games.

Sunday was delightfully lazy. We snacked off leftovers, and finally got around to watching the Super Bowl about an hour after it had started, Tivo-style. That made the game (and the commercials) much more enjoyable, and since I didn’t really have a favorite to win, it was nice to just watch and appreciate some good football.

This week has been crawling by, as I knew it would – don’t the weeks before vacations always slow down? I fully intend to take some work home with me this afternoon, though, since the forecast is for 8″-12″ of snow up here, with the worst of it falling between 4 AM and noon tomorrow. If it’s really bad, I have no intention of trying to get in to work. That’s fine, though – I have a stack of about 50 SOP’s I need to read by the end of the week, and I can do it at home or here.

By the way, on a complete tangent: Does anyone else use Del.icio.us? I can be found on there under the username DuncanHusky. I tend to use it to bookmark good recipes that I want to come back to, funny comics, and other random things (random example: the amusing comic “I Am a Host at The Olive Garden”).

Good News Everyone!

And the good stuff keeps on rollin’…

First and foremost: as takaza mentioned, he was offered and accepted a position at his company’s headquarters in Buffalo Grove, IL. That’s about 20 minutes closer to us, and they’re right next to the Buffalo Grove Metra station. Even better, it’s a significant bump in pay and a much better career path for him. I’m so very happy for him! It also moves him out of the toxic environment that he’s in now, which makes me even happier. There will be a 30-day transition period, but as of March 1 he’ll be in his new job. Hooray! That’s also very near the Westin Chicago North Shore, where Midwest FurFest 2008 will be, so he will be helping to scout out restaurants for the Restaurant Guide on his lunch hours 🙂

More good news: I filed my taxes for 2007 the other night and found out that between federal and state taxes I have a refund of $1,300 coming my way. Woohoo! Of course, after spending some time looking over newegg.com at all the sexy laptops, I realized that mine gets me where I’m going (albeit slowly) and that the money will go better to pay down debt. Not nearly as much fun, but hey, it will make life a lot more fun later. Here’s a very handy tip: if you use State Farm Insurance, log into their website. On the left is the link “FREE tax filing” – click on that and you will be taken to the Turbotax website, where you can get access to Turbotax Deluxe for free – including free federal and state e-filing. That saved me $58 over last year. Sweet!

As Dan mentioned, we’re hosting his family and friends for dinner and games on Saturday night. If you’re interested in joining us, let me or Dan know by Friday night (so I can shop and cook accordingly). Having read through the Cooks Illustrated French Onion Soup recipe I’m all about that. I just need to figure out if it’s possible to roast multiple chickens in our oven or if I’m going to need to re-think things. That may become roast pork 🙂 Since it’s his sister’s birthday, dessert will be birthday cake from Lovin’ Oven Cakery. Nom nom nom!

Random Stuff

None of this makes a coherent single entry, so you get a bunch of random stuff:

I just finished a quick meeting with my boss. Granted, he technically only had two months of me being an employee of $employer (in addition to the nine moths prior working the exact same job as a contractor), but he gave me an excellent annual review and is very happy with my work. This makes me positively giddy 🙂 Speaking of work-related things, I had lunch earlier today with tozier_wah, which was very cool since he just works across the campus from me. We need to make that a weekly thing or something. We had a great discussion about Midwest FurFest and I think I might have something to keep him busy during the con this year 🙂

Yesterday I was all virtuous and stuff and went ahead and got my voting for next week’s primary out of the way. It was very cool that the Lake County website had a sample of the exact ballot that I would be presented with so I was able to do a little research on the local candidates and make some informed decisions. Plus I had a nice chat with the poll workers, who were very nice folks.

We’re having takaza‘s family over on Saturday evening, along with some friends, for a night of gaming. I’m working up a nice menu too – maybe French Onion Soup, and roasted chicken. I think we need some more wine – perhaps a trip to Wine Knows is in order. We also need to do some thorough cleaning of the place, which is pretty standard before company. It’s one of the reasons I like to have company over with some regularity: left to our own devices, we keep the clutter to a minimum, but I need a reason to get really motivated to deep clean and take a toothbrush to the baseboards 🙂

Apparently, I’m going on a trip in a week and a half. I say “apparently” because, well, I don’t know where I’m going. You see, Dan has put together some kind of trip for us to celebrate my fortieth birthday, and all I know is that we’re flying off…somewhere (he won’t say where)…for a four-day vacation. About all I know is that it’s domestic, since neither of us have valid passports, but other than that I have no clue. I also know that no amount of begging for clues from Dan will yield any further information, so I probably appear annoyingly incurious, but I’m very content in the knowledge that Dan knows me well, and whatever he has put together will be truly amazing. And whether it’s amazing or not, I’ll have my love there with me, so that makes it amazing in itself. (I’m sure he’s made all kinds of posts in his journal about this that I can’t see, and all of you who have read and heard about this from him are dying of laughter. Hey, I’m OK with that. I’ll just sit here in quiet anticipation 🙂

Oh, and one last note: I would note that one of my favorite coffees, Dark Roast Sumatran, from one of my favorite coffee providers, Alterra Coffee, is on sale at 10% off. With shipping by Priority Mail only $4.60, if you order a couple of pounds (like I usually do) it’s comparable to buying coffee off the shelf from some of the higher-end providers. (I also recently discovered the Brazil Traditional Dry, which is simply outstanding as well).

Weekend Update (and Beer Report)

Yep, it’s cold. Just like they said it would. It was 0° F out this morning and will be soaring up to 15° F by this afternoon…all with a 10-20 mph wind. Toasty!

So back to the weekend. takaza and I met up with linnaeus, datahawk, roho, and genet for lunch at my favorite suburban beer outpost, The Firkin in Libertyville. I had a fine time, sampling some truly excellent beers: Lagunitas Brewing’s Lumpy Gravy American Strong Ale (celebrating the 40th anniversary of Frank Zappa’s seminal album of the same name), Lagunitas Brewing’s Brown Shugga Barley Wine, and Unibroue’s Trois Pistoles Strong Dark Ale.
Given that the first was 7% alcohol and the other two 10% and 9% respectively…yeah, I really enjoyed those beers! The chicken and shrimp etoufee was only OK, but with beers like that, who cares? The downside is that for a little more we could have gone to Tramonto’s Steak and Seafood and gotten a much better meal, so The Firkin isn’t someplace we go all that often.
After lunch we all headed up to Roho and Genet’s place in Antioch and admired their bowling-alley-in-progress (well, not really – they’re installing hardwood floors, and feren commented on the similarity to a bowling alley…) and then relaxed with multiple episodes of Ninja Warrior and some fun conversation.

Sunday? Yeah. Lots of laundry. All day long. OK, and lots of Psychonauts, too, since I’m re-playing my way through the game. I also broke down the ten-pound pork loin we bought the weekend before into meal-size packages of pork chops, and then ground up the trimmings into sausage and froze that as well.

That’ll hold for now. More to write but I have to tend to a few things…

Random Things For Your Reading Pleasure

Hmm, so it sounds like most people will be getting a check for $600 from Uncle Sugar Daddy. Politics aside, about all I can see is that for us, it’s $1,200 that’s going to Visa. As I said to takaza, “Fiscal responsibility is boring.” But hey – less debt is a Good Thing. I still want to buy something frivolous, though – like maybe a sexy new dual-core laptop or something.

Cook’s Illustrated is looking for recipe testers. Heck yeah, I signed up! While I often have an idle yen to cook many of the recipes from their pages, this gives me the impetus to actually get off my butt and do it. Of course, I may need some help from friends in evaluating the finished products. Hmm.

It was a screwy morning today. As we approached Dan’s usual train station there were cars streaming out of it – never a good sign at 6:50 AM. Dan checked and Metra’s website said that a freight train had derailed in Antioch and no trains were running (which was not really the case). Well, phooey on that. I dropped Dan off at the Round Lake station and he wound up having to take an expensive cab ride to work from Glenview. Then, as I was getting some cash from the ATM on the way in to work I notice (after my transaction, unfortunately) that the lock on the ATM was half-open (it’s the type where when unlocked a faceplate pops out, then you unscrew it). I called the bank branch when they opened and they assured me that if the ATM had been opened an alarm would have disabled it. I’ll keep an eye on my account just in case…

Just Another Manic…Wednesday?

All work and no play blah blah blah. You know the drill.

Work has definitely picked up over the last few weeks, which is a good thing. There’s several large manufacturing expansions going on that bode well for plenty of work to do through 2010 and beyond, too – always a Good Thing!

Last weekend was quite lovely. takaza and I drove up to Milwaukee and did some shopping at Milwaukee Public Market, Alterra Coffee, and The Spice House. I had thought about stopping by the new brewpub near the Public Market, but that will have to wait for another day. We had a great time refilling our spice cabinet, and picked up some wonderful burgers (including some bacon and provolone burgers) and sausages from Ceriello’s. On the way home we did our weekly shopping at Woodman’s in Kenosha; we got some great deals on pork loin and something labeled “fresh pork” with no further explanation (it turns out it was boneless meat from the ribs).

On Sunday, we did gloriously nothing. Well, we did watch a couple of football games and the finale to The Amazing Race 12 (which ended like I expected it would, though not necessarily how I’d hoped it would). We also took the 8 pounds of “fresh pork” and, after a bit of butchering (and Dan shortening his finger by a sixteenth of an inch – he’s healing nicely, thank you 🙂 we ground it up and put it into one-pound packets and froze them. Now, when we want Italian sausage for pasta, we pull out of the packets, defrost it in a sink full of cold water (which takes all of 20 minutes) and mix it with Italian sausage seasoning. I still have a 9-pound pork loin to break down into pork chops and maybe a pork roast.

While most everyone is planning for other conventions (we’ll make it out there someday…) I’ve been spending a lot of time working on Midwest FurFest stuff, mainly writing content for the website, the new version of which went live earlier this week. I have a package to send off to one of our Guests of Honor this afternoon, as well, and I’m working on a decision for our third Guest of Honor too; I’m still waiting to hear from a few folks on that {poke, poke}.

While I’m out running errands after work today, I’ll need to stop by Garden Fresh Market – they have a sale on boneless, skinless chicken breasts for $1.49 a pound. Yeah, I’ll be picking up a whole bunch of those, because that’s a fantastic price (hey linnaeus, I see that they have a store coming down your way, too – come to think of it, that’s not far from daveqat and jimcyl‘s new place, either). It looks like this weekend will be a bit more social than the last, which is kind of nice. With luck, we’ll be spending Saturday afternoon with good friends, good food, and good beer.

Oh, and because I missed it twelve days ago: happy birthday to this journal, which turned six years old on January 11th. Man, there’s been a lot of ups and downs documented here, but I’m really glad that I’ve stuck with it.

It’s a Difficult Monday

I started the day feeling completely out of kilter. Long lists of stuff to get done for MFF and for work, weaving in and out of each other, all seemingly insurmountable. After spending the morning across the campus and having gotten a very tasty chicken avocado wrap for lunch, things are looking much better. There’s still a ton of stuff that I have to get done, but it’s no longer quite so scary.

We had a very enjoyable weekend. Friday evening we had a lovely dinner with genet (unfortunately, roho‘s soul was still being consumed by his employer), then got to relax and unwind a bit. Following a lazy Saturday morning, takaza and I did a bit of cooking for daveqat‘s birthday party – Dan made cheezy mashed potatoes with bacon, and I made a warm potato-bacon salad (which was supposed to be a warm salad with bacon and Jerusalem artichoke, but alas, Garden Fresh had no Jerusalem artichokes in stock). For the bacon trifecta, I made pig candy, which was served with brie and sliced pears. Most people who tried it really liked it. The party on Saturday night was quite a lot of fun, and much booze was consumed.

On Sunday we met mirkowuff and perro for lunch at Osteria di Tramonto (yum!) then gave Perro a tour of the new MFF hotel. As he mentioned in his entry today, it’s going to be tricky: we have more space to work with, but the way that the space is divided up makes things rather tricky. I think that Perro will do a great job. By the way, Perro has also been named my Vice-Chair for this year. While traditionally that has been a role for the next chairman, in this case I don’t care about that. I’m more interested in making sure that we have someone who can reliably answer questions and act in the chairman’s role when I am unavailable.

Next up was the first MFF staff meeting of the year. I didn’t quite get it in under an hour, but I was close. We covered a lot of ground, and got a lot accomplished. Staff members, if you didn’t see the minutes on the staff mailing list, they have also been posted to the staff area of the Midwest FurFest forums. Sunday evening I got a bit of unwelcome news that is going to take some time to figure out how to deal with. Part of the fun of being con chair, I guess.

Finally, I just finished registering for Furry Connection North. We’re still working on the accommodations, but we should have that nailed down in the next few days. Woohoo!